Entries from November 2014

‘71 is a fantastically tense and beautifully shot thriller about a British soldier stuck behind ‘enemy lines’ during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I was particularly impressed by the economy of the script; the writer clearly – and correctly – trusts the audience to figure out who the characters are [...]

Eight years ago, I lamented to a friend that I was spending too much time keeping up with my RSS feeds. RSS feeds are generated by websites and they tell you when they’ve published new content; the feeds, and feed-readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, and eventually Google Reader, became popular partly as a way to [...]

It’s safe to assume that in the next 10-20 years, a decent percentage of people – maybe 5-10% – will wear cameras that constantly record their surroundings. Such cameras already exist, of course, but they’re clunky and low-resolution; the ones we’ll see in the future will have a much better resolution and field of view, [...]

A game I like to play at history museums is imagining the present-day equivalents of past behaviour and objects. So at The Geffrye Museum of the Home in Hoxton, London, it’s fun to look at their Period Rooms and link up past and present behaviours.

Mr. Miller Doesn’t Go to Washington, a bracingly honest story about running for Congress. It just astonishes me quite how much time candidates – and elected politicians – have to spend on fundraising. Hours. A. Day.
I had written before about how crazy it is that we expect politicians to spend four hours a day (or [...]

“106 calories per serving,” it proudly proclaims. You quickly do the mental calculation – that’s a mere 5% of your recommended daily allowance! Even better, it’s “wholegrain” and “high in fibre.” You munch on what you consider to be a serving of popcorn, safe in the [...]

The new hotness in the podcasting world is Serial, made by the people behind This American Life. After only a few weeks, it’s already attracting 850,000 downloads per episode. It’s a fantastic show, perfectly suited to a format that allows people to follow along week-by-week but listen at a time of their own choosing.
The US [...]

Questions and answers for 26, an organisation for writers:
What is your day job?
I’m CEO and co-founder of Six to Start. We make story-like games and game-like stories, and our most popular game is Zombies, Run!, a running game and audio adventure with over one million sales, co-created with novelist Naomi Alderman.
What are you working on [...]

Radiotopia: A Storytelling Revolution
Radiotopia is a podcast network by Roman Mars, the guy responsible for one of my favorite shows, 99% Invisible. I’ve met him in person and he is a lovely, generous guy who has made it his life’s work to support new [...]

Here’s the sort of TV I watched in 1995: Red Dwarf, Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Babylon 5, The X-Files – and Pride and Prejudice. I can’t recall how I was convinced to watch a costume drama based on a book genre that I had never previously shown an iota of interest in, but [...]

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What are the 100 objects that future historians will pick to define our 21st century? A javelin thrown by an 'enhanced' Paralympian, far further than any normal human? Virtual reality interrogation equipment used by police forces? The world's most expensive glass of water, mined from the moons of Mars? Or desire modification drugs that fuel a brand new religion?

A History of the Future in 100 Objects describes a hundred slices of the future of everything, spanning politics, technology, art, religion, and entertainment. Some of the objects are described by future historians; others through found materials, short stories, or dialogues. All come from a very real future.